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Quebec history courses should be rewritten with nationalist focus, report suggests

Parti Québécois gets backing to replace curriculum that promoted citizenship and diversity with one that emphasizes “Quebec’s singular experience.”

A new report recommending changes to Quebec's high school history curriculum gives backing to Premier Pauline Marois as she pledges to bolster francophone identity in the province, with an election expected next month. (Jacques Boissinot / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

MONTREAL—Quebec’s sovereigntist government plans to replace a high school history program that promotes citizenship and diversity with one that will teach students through the lens of French Canada’s unique travails, including its struggle for nationhood.

The new curriculum, with its recommended focus on “Quebec’s singular experience” in Canada, will be rolled out for a trial this September in 90 classes across Quebec. It could touch on cultural trends unique to the province, such as higher rates of union membership, relations between ethnic groups, the role of the Catholic Church or the women’s movement.

But the red meat for nationalists and separatists is the decidedly French-Canadian spin on the founding of New France, the takeover by the British, the founding of Canada in 1867, the two world wars and a half-century of independence and national unity struggles, including two losing sovereignty referendums.

Others have expressed fear of a backdoor plan to raise a new generation of sovereigntists, note the authors of the report, who were commissioned by the PQ to consult with education experts and other interested parties, including anglophone groups, throughout Quebec.

“The most reluctant speakers said that above all they worried about an overly patriotic version of history, closer to propaganda than to the discipline of history,” the authors wrote.

Advocates of the new curriculum say it will replace a program that whitewashed Quebec’s often difficult past, brushing over defining moments in Québécois consciousness such as the 1837 uprising against the British in what was then Lower Canada by rebels known as Les Patriotes, said Pierre Graveline, director general of the Fondation Lionel-Groulx, a group that aims to promote Quebec’s history and culture.

“Since 2006 we have largely avoided teaching anything about Quebec history that is contentious. Even the British conquest became a simple regime change,” he said. “Everyone thought (the curriculum) was a disaster. It was unanimous.”

The current program, introduced in 2006, crams 500 years of history into the third year of secondary school in Quebec, which is the province’s equivalent of Grade 9. The following year’s curriculum focuses on studying historical themes as well as instilling a sense of citizenship in students, which is defined as recognizing both the province’s diversity and its people’s common values.

Students and teachers complain about repetition, confusion and too little time for too much work. The new program spreads the 500 years of history over two academic years and takes a more classic, chronological approach to the past.

Sovereigntists railed against the current program for what they saw as propaganda for multiculturalism — an idea that is embraced in English Canada but bitterly disputed in Quebec.

The change will be another arrow in the quiver of Premier Pauline Marois — a promise made and a promise kept — as she aims for a majority government. The PQ is also set to campaign on a so-called values charter that proposes barring public servants from wearing religious symbols to work, bolstering French-language laws and holding a feasibility study on Quebec independence.

The adage that history is written by the victors is particularly poignant in the present case. Just as the Quebec Liberals were accused of rewriting history to fit their societal and political goals when they ushered in their curriculum changes in 2006, so the PQ are now charged with pushing propaganda on unwitting students.

“It’s always the same debate,” said Graveline, adding that people must ultimately have faith in the integrity and professionalism of teachers. “I don’t think history teachers would accept to teach a partisan version of history.”

Some fear that the new curriculum may only emphasize a troubling trend uncovered in a novel 10-year study by Université Laval historian Jocelyn Létourneau. The scholar asked high school and university students to sum up the history of Quebec in one phrase. He found that while students may not have all the facts, dates and figures, they are clearly marked by an overwhelmingly negative view of the Québécois saga — one defined by endless struggle and repeated defeat.

While every history program will be subject to interpretative twists and turns, the goal of any new program should be to stick to the facts, said J.P. Fossey, who helped draft the position of the Quebec Provincial Association of Teachers, a union representing 8,000 members in Quebec’s English school boards.

“We would want the program to be balanced and reflect the various facets of what has happened in Quebec and in Canada over time, and not be limited to just one point of view on things,” he said.

Simon Jacobs, president of the Quebec Anglophone Heritage Network, said his group fears that a new course filtered through too narrow a lens will lead to what he calls “cultural hemispheric neglect” — a modern twist on the idea of the two solitudes captured in Hugh MacLennan’s iconic 1945 novel.

“I think sometimes the problem that can happen, especially through a nationalistic bent, is that they just don’t realize there is another aspect to the Quebec history, and as a result it’s just not even considered,” Jacobs said.

“They don’t realize that there is a whole chunk of history and implication of more than just the French going back to New France. There is a whole history that is interconnected and interwoven of the French and the English — and other cultures, too.”

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